Common materials for hobbing in the gear cutting industry include high speed steel (HSS) and solid carbide (SC). Although HSS tools offer lower cost solutions, wear and reliability are issues. High wear resistant materials, such as cemented carbide, are popular for metal drilling and cutting tools.
Solid carbide hobs offer high cutting speeds, but the larger module sizes are very heavy and therefore both difficult for customers to handle and can be too heavy for the machine on which the tool is to be used. Indexable hob solutions for module sizes 4 and are commercially available. However, variation in the location of the inserts limits tolerances to quality class B approximately to DIN 3968 and/or BS ISO 4468 in most situations.
Another disadvantage with the presently available solid carbide hobs is cost Raw material costs are the major contribution to expensive production costs. Moreover, current solid carbide hobs don't allow the introduction of cutting coolant/lubricant or vibration damping.